There was this girl I knew back in high school and we used to be “that older couple” who would always fight and banter all the time. We were friends, nothing more, but we had a lot of innate rivalries (Brazilian vs Venezuelan, our tastes in sports, religion, politics, etc) so we’d bicker a lot. She was also one of those popular girls that dressed nicely and put up a front like they’re tough, but you knew it was fake. Turns out, she wasn’t fake.

We were hanging out one day just me and her. We got in to a more heated discussion and she jokingly said I needed to stop or she’d kick my ass. I told her to try and she punched me in the arm and called me a dick. The thing is, she threw a legitimate punch like she was trained, just didn’t put power behind it so it wouldn’t hurt me. We play fought a bit and she actually knew how to fight. Normally girls play fight and kind of crumble on purpose, but she actually stood up to me and it turns out she took martial arts on the side and didn’t tell people since it’s not girly. Idk why but it was crazy hot that she could fight and that her backbone wasn’t just fake attitude, but actual self-confidence. Gotta love girls who are tough and confident.

— JefemanG

3. Good at video games

She destroyed a miniboss in my D&D game with a critical hit that did an absurd amount of damage at really low levels.

— FaxCelestis

4. Passionate about her art

It was a girl I knew since my freshmen year but I didn’t develop any feelings for until the end of my senior year of high school. I always thought she was cute but we just had a really good platonic relationship that I really enjoyed. We talked a lot about medieval fantasy and baseball, she liked the same music as me, and so on.

We took an art class elective in the second semester of our senior year. We were doing a portrait painting of celebrities and she had chosen to paint Sean Connery circa SNL Jeopardy (I was doing Christian Bale in American Psycho). She was really concentrating on hers and I glanced over at her.

Her hands and forearms had quite a bit of paint on them. She proceeded to wipe her arm on her face and left a big smear on her cheek without noticing. She was so into her painting she didn’t notice how ridiculous she looked. I don’t know why but that exact moment I fell for her.

— FreshPrinceofAZ

5. Taller than average girls

I met a basketball player that fascinated me. Couldn’t understand why.

Then I realized that I liked her looking directly in my eyes.

I am 6ft 3 so I am used to being taller. So a 6ft well proportioned chick was a surprise turn on.

— ShangoThor

6. Educated and not embarrassed about it

She started talking about economics.

I pretty much thought she was the coolest person ever right in that second.

— Aren_7

7. Amazing singer

Not long after my girlfriend and I started dating, we went to our first of several karaoke nights. I realized just how beautiful her singing voice is. We sang “I’ll Be There” as a duet, and she sang her parts at least as well as Mariah Carey, if not better. Her body language also showed she had real passion in this. I was blown away.

— PacSan300

8. Classical education

She could speak Latin and ancient Greek. I almost spent the whole date asking her about it.

— Tundur

9. She encouraged me to pursue my dreams

This was a unique one. She encouraged me to write.

After maybe a week of texting her, she told me she was very impressed by my ability to use words to explain my thoughts and feelings, that she could feel that I was a writer. After that, I started writing some of the creative thoughts I had down, and they turned into poems. The first bit of prose I wrote was about the first time we had sex.

The next night my head was just swirling thinking back on it, so I opened up my laptop and for two hours, the story just flowed out of me. I was writing until 2:30AM. She asked to read it a few days later and said she was blown away by how I captured the experience and illustrated the feeling of our sex. We talked for hours about these bits of my expression, about how they made her feel, and where they came from in me.

It was a kind of experience that I’ve never had with another woman in 10 years of dating. Sharing my words with her developed a very special and different kind of intimacy, it’s tough to explain.

— Only1nDreams

10. Musical tastes being in-sync

Early on in our relationship I mentioned that one of my favorite songs was Cigarette Daydreams by Cage the Elephant, she giggled and walked over, picked up my guitar, and played it right then and there with a grin spread across her face.

— iLeDD

11. Being similar socially

First time we hung out she started talking about how she wasn’t into partying and drinking like most people our age. That’s rare and I found it great since neither am I. I have nothing against that stuff, but if you can meet someone else who also doesn’t want to do that, huge plus.

— Cant-Find-Username

12. Culturally sophisticated

I wasn’t really attracted to her at first but she was really passionate about singing, opera, and musicals. She had this adorable personality and she was very much into the character of people over their appearance. She’s the only girl I knew who would bond with me over Mozart and talk about the music so passionately

— aldksjfalkjda

13. Something emotional clicked